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For those of you that don't know about Slackware. Slackware is the oldest distro and it is still plenty alive today. When to setup linux on my computer in the e

For those of you that don't know about Slackware. Slackware is the oldest distro and it is still plenty alive today. When to setup linux on my computer in the early days with other distros (red hat/suse/etc), this would eventually crap up (rpm hell) and give me something unusable. Using Slackware forces you understand how everything works in a linux distro. This lets you fix your own problems.

kagamine 11y ago
And then SalixOS lets you benefit from Slackware without understanding much at all, like some kind of slack Ubuntu.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  To me the understanding that Slackware forced upon you, at least earlier, was the benefit. They could have bumped the version number to 15, I don't think anyone would mind.
DeepYogurt 11y ago
It's not the oldest. SLS predates slackware (as do a few others iirc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System Slack was awesome back in the day, but the the philosophy as being "as unix like as possible" prevented it evolving and adding nice things like package managers. Using slackware is a good exercise, but I'd never use it for an application I care about.
- Tomte 11y ago
  Correct, "oldest surviving", beating Debian by a hair.
- babuskov 11y ago
  If you only need a couple of applications, it's great. We use it for 200+ POS terminals for our ERP/CRM software. It's obscure enough that the end users have no clue how to mess anything up (aside for occasional icon deletion in KDE, but even that needs the "unlock" step).
- massysett 11y ago
  This is simply false. Slackware has a package manager. It just does not resolve dependencies. It has also evolved. The Slackware developers have worked on packages such as wicd, which makes networking easy without dependency bloat; other distros reap the benefits of it too.
  - creshal 11y ago
    wicd is pretty much obsoleted outside Slackware because of its atrociously slow development pace. connman beats it by far in terms of "easy networking without bloat", and NetworkManager doesn't have noticeable bloat if you have a desktop environment anyway.
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/wicd-requires-patch-after-update-4175551527/ http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/wicd-re... Wicd is proving difficult for 14.2. I must admit that I prefer network-manager because of the convenience of the modem-manager when using a usb mobile Internet dongle. I take the general point you are making. I'm an end user of Slackware. I think that anyone who has ever successfully installed Windows on a laptop would cope with a Slackware install fine if they read the docs on the DVD. Slackpkg makes updates reasonably easy.
- JdeBP 11y ago
  > the philosophy as being "as unix like as possible" prevented it evolving and adding nice things like package managers Others have pointed out that the existence of Slackware package management gives the lie to that assertion. It remains to point out that Unices had package managers, so being "Unix like" does not involve eschewing package management at all. XENIX had a package management system, for example. It originated in AT&T System V Release 4, was also present in Solaris, and has been picked up by the Heirloom Project. * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgadd.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgadd.1M.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkginfo.1.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkginfo.1.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgrm.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgrm.1M.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkgtrans.1.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkgtrans.1.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgchk.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgchk.1M.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgask.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgask.1M.html * http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/pkgtools.html http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/pkgtools.html
baldfat 11y ago
I know you didn't mean to bring this up as a point against rpm but my ALL TIME MOST HATED PHASE is rpm hell. I still hear people say that they won't use RPM based systems because of RPM Hell which makes me inside want to jump through the screen and shake them and say "Have you ever built a single package?! Because if you ever have you would know this is 100% crap for over 10 YEARS!" Sure there was a time frame when there was an issue with dependency and it was fixed but everyone treated it like it still was an issue 5+ years later. Sorry rant over but I just want people to know that RPM issue was just an issue in the early 2000s and Redhat made --redhatprovides and --redhatrequires command line options that if people used them would fix the issues at the time till things got changed with libraries.
- creshal 11y ago
  RPM seems hell enough in current versions: https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a81c11aa https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a81c11aa Disclaimer, I've never worked with it, I don't know how accurate the description is.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    So you post a German blog post about something you have never done. I now have gone full on salt. Once again their is nothing wrong with RPM and this anti-RPM stuff needs to just die. Linus uses Fedora and if anyone would flip out if something was bad technology Linus would, but instead people who just heard a cool RPM Dependency Hell still continue this 10+ year old issue over and over again without knowing anything technical about why it was an issue (For a short period of time) and how it was fixed.
    - creshal 11y ago
      > So you post a German blog post I'm sorry, I didn't know Germans weren't allowed to have opinions.
      - adrusi 11y ago
        But if your goal is to provide veracity to your claim, then posting a German article on an English forum isn't very useful.
pjmlp 11y ago
It was my very first one, Slackware 2 with kernel 1.0.9. I still remember the main feature being announced was the early support for elf format. Nowadays after a decade of jumping between OSes, I just settled on Windows, for better or worse, it does better what I need for my work (please don't start a flame war on this). However I do owe a lot to Slackware, as before it my only access to UNIX were expensive Xenix, Aix and DG/UX workstations at the university.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  (please don't start a flame war on this). tbh I think you already flamed yourself, charred to a crisp, worse than any of us here could do. Windows User.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    I don't see Windows User as being anything negative, given the pleasure I had in these 30 years developing for it, more than any UNIX platform I used in the same years. But as I said, I don't want to start a flamewar about OSes and development tools available.

kagamine 11y ago

And then SalixOS lets you benefit from Slackware without understanding much at all, like some kind of slack Ubuntu.

mrweasel 11y ago
To me the understanding that Slackware forced upon you, at least earlier, was the benefit. They could have bumped the version number to 15, I don't think anyone would mind.

DeepYogurt 11y ago

It's not the oldest. SLS predates slackware (as do a few others iirc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System Slack was awesome back in the day, but the the philosophy as being "as unix like as possible" prevented it evolving and adding nice things like package managers. Using slackware is a good exercise, but I'd never use it for an application I care about.

Tomte 11y ago
Correct, "oldest surviving", beating Debian by a hair.
babuskov 11y ago
If you only need a couple of applications, it's great. We use it for 200+ POS terminals for our ERP/CRM software. It's obscure enough that the end users have no clue how to mess anything up (aside for occasional icon deletion in KDE, but even that needs the "unlock" step).
massysett 11y ago
This is simply false. Slackware has a package manager. It just does not resolve dependencies. It has also evolved. The Slackware developers have worked on packages such as wicd, which makes networking easy without dependency bloat; other distros reap the benefits of it too.
- creshal 11y ago
  wicd is pretty much obsoleted outside Slackware because of its atrociously slow development pace. connman beats it by far in terms of "easy networking without bloat", and NetworkManager doesn't have noticeable bloat if you have a desktop environment anyway.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/wicd-requires-patch-after-update-4175551527/ http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/wicd-re... Wicd is proving difficult for 14.2. I must admit that I prefer network-manager because of the convenience of the modem-manager when using a usb mobile Internet dongle. I take the general point you are making. I'm an end user of Slackware. I think that anyone who has ever successfully installed Windows on a laptop would cope with a Slackware install fine if they read the docs on the DVD. Slackpkg makes updates reasonably easy.
JdeBP 11y ago
> the philosophy as being "as unix like as possible" prevented it evolving and adding nice things like package managers Others have pointed out that the existence of Slackware package management gives the lie to that assertion. It remains to point out that Unices had package managers, so being "Unix like" does not involve eschewing package management at all. XENIX had a package management system, for example. It originated in AT&T System V Release 4, was also present in Solaris, and has been picked up by the Heirloom Project. * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgadd.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgadd.1M.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkginfo.1.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkginfo.1.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgrm.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgrm.1M.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkgtrans.1.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1/pkgtrans.1.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgchk.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgchk.1M.html * http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgask.1M.html http://uw714doc.sco.com/en/man/html.1M/pkgask.1M.html * http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/pkgtools.html http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/pkgtools.html

baldfat 11y ago

I know you didn't mean to bring this up as a point against rpm but my ALL TIME MOST HATED PHASE is rpm hell. I still hear people say that they won't use RPM based systems because of RPM Hell which makes me inside want to jump through the screen and shake them and say "Have you ever built a single package?! Because if you ever have you would know this is 100% crap for over 10 YEARS!" Sure there was a time frame when there was an issue with dependency and it was fixed but everyone treated it like it still was an issue 5+ years later. Sorry rant over but I just want people to know that RPM issue was just an issue in the early 2000s and Redhat made --redhatprovides and --redhatrequires command line options that if people used them would fix the issues at the time till things got changed with libraries.

creshal 11y ago
RPM seems hell enough in current versions: https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a81c11aa https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a81c11aa Disclaimer, I've never worked with it, I don't know how accurate the description is.
- baldfat 11y ago
  So you post a German blog post about something you have never done. I now have gone full on salt. Once again their is nothing wrong with RPM and this anti-RPM stuff needs to just die. Linus uses Fedora and if anyone would flip out if something was bad technology Linus would, but instead people who just heard a cool RPM Dependency Hell still continue this 10+ year old issue over and over again without knowing anything technical about why it was an issue (For a short period of time) and how it was fixed.
  - creshal 11y ago
    > So you post a German blog post I'm sorry, I didn't know Germans weren't allowed to have opinions.
    - adrusi 11y ago
      But if your goal is to provide veracity to your claim, then posting a German article on an English forum isn't very useful.

pjmlp 11y ago

It was my very first one, Slackware 2 with kernel 1.0.9. I still remember the main feature being announced was the early support for elf format. Nowadays after a decade of jumping between OSes, I just settled on Windows, for better or worse, it does better what I need for my work (please don't start a flame war on this). However I do owe a lot to Slackware, as before it my only access to UNIX were expensive Xenix, Aix and DG/UX workstations at the university.

ktRolster 11y ago
(please don't start a flame war on this). tbh I think you already flamed yourself, charred to a crisp, worse than any of us here could do. Windows User.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  I don't see Windows User as being anything negative, given the pleasure I had in these 30 years developing for it, more than any UNIX platform I used in the same years. But as I said, I don't want to start a flamewar about OSes and development tools available.